midnight, and this must go to town early to-morrow morning.

I have almost got through the first volume of the Medici. In spite of the beauty of the Italian language, the style appears very meagre. One must call it simplicity, if one would commend it. The sincerity is considerable enough to make the Medici shudder in their pompous tombs in St. Lorenzo. What a severe tyrant was their great Cosmo! Abbé, indeed! But how facile is address when it stops at nothing! Or is it art to stab and poison? Then assassins are great politicians. The work, to be sure, does unfold a horrid scene of popes and princes; but I don't know how-I don't know what I expected all that scene of villainous ambition is but cold at this distance of time; one is shocked, never interested. At least, the historian wanted ability to move the passions; or, perhaps, it was impossible to excite anything but horror, when he does not seem amidst all his materials to have discovered one good character.

The only person for whom I have conceived an esteem is for the Sovereign himself who commanded the work. He must mean to be a good prince, when he enjoins the truth to be so amply told of his predecessors.* He must be aware of the reflections that will be made hereafter, if he is not.

* The appearance of Galluzzi's History of the House of Medici, which was undertaken at the express desire of the Great-Duke Leopold, gave rise to strong remonstrances, on the part of the Courts of Spain, Naples, Parma, and especially of the Holy See, whose atrocities he had fearlessly exposed.-ED.

The Duchess of Gloucester has ordered me to thank you particularly for a very obliging letter that she has received from you: she does not say on what occasion. They are at Weymouth, and greatly happy at having lately inoculated Prince William as successfully as they could possibly wish. Adieu! dear sir, or sirs.

LETTER CCCLXIII.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 26, 1781.

YOUR letter of the 10th, which I have received to-night, has been very cordial to me, as Mrs. Noel and I have been very uneasy at not seeing your nephew, who used to have the two qualities of punctuality and flying; but I see he cannot execute the latter when his wings are wetted. I left Twickenham this morning; but, though the Duchess of Montrose and Mrs. Noel are to come to town on Wednesday, I shall send a line to the latter, to let her know the accidents your nephew experienced at setting out.

I am delighted that Mrs. Damer and you are delighted with each other. I know it mutually, for Lady Ailesbury received a letter this evening from Lady William Campbell, who told her so. Thank you a million of times for your kindness to them. If you have time to know Mrs. Damer, what will you not think of her? But I must turn to a subject that will not be so pleasing to you.

An account came yesterday that could not but be

expected, that Washington and the French have made Lord Cornwallis and his whole army prisoners. I do not know what others think, but to me it seems fortunate that they were not all cut to pieces. It is not heroic perhaps, but I am glad, that this disaster arriving before our fleet reached the Chesapeak, it turned back to New York without attacking the French fleet, who are above three to two, thirty-seven to twentythree. This is all I know yet; and yet this comes at an untoward moment; for the Parliament meets tomorrow, and it puts the Speech and speeches a little into disorder.*

* Official intelligence of the surrender of the British army at Yorktown to the American forces under General Washington had reached town on the preceding day. The state of the public mind at this moment is thus described, in a letter from Sir Samuel Romilly to a friend : "Everybody has been in great anxiety for the army under Lord Cornwallis. His situation was very critical: an army, vastly superior in numbers to his own, surrounded him on every side; and no person seemed to doubt that, unless Clinton arrived in time to relieve him before his provisions were consumed, he would be obliged to surrender up himself and his army prisoners, and the disgrace at Saratoga would be renewed in the Chesapeak. It was thought, however, that Clinton might reach the Chesapeak before it was too late; and much was then expected from the valour of two such British armies against forces so unnaturally allied together, and so unaccustomed to act in conjunction, as those of America and France. At any rate, it was supposed, that the event must be quite decisive of the war; and the public was eager and burning with impatience to hear whether America was to return to her dependence, or be dissevered from us for ever. In this uncertainty, the day on which the Parliament was to meet drew near. The King's speech was prepared, had been read at the Council, and was to have been delivered to Parliament the very next day, when news arrived that Cornwallis and all his soldiers were prisoners. This report, which came with such authority as not to admit of any doubt, filled many persons with the deepest consternation; they saw blasted all our hopes of ever attaining what, in the course of so many years, we had pursued at the cost of so much blood and treasure:

I cannot put on the face of the day, and act grief. Whatever puts an end to the American war will save the lives of thousands millions of money too. If glory compensates such sacrifices, I never heard that disgraces and disappointments were palliatives; but I will not descant, nor is it right to vaunt of having been in the right when one's country's shame is the solution of one's prophecy, nor would one join in the triumph of her enemies. Details you will hear from France sooner than I can send them; but I will write again the moment I know any thing material. sorry your nephew is not arrived; who, by being in Parliament and in the world, would be sooner and better informed than I, who stir little out of my own house, and have no political connections, nor scarce a wish but to die in peace.

I am

LETTER CCCLXIV.

Nov. 29, 1781.

YOUR nephew is arrived, as he has told you

others, instead of turning their views back, looked forward to the evils we had escaped, and thought we had more reason to rejoice at an event which had delivered us from a war so destructive to the nation; an event which, by happening thus early (for they considered it as inevitable at some time or other), had spared us many millions of debt, and the loss of many gallant armies, which the Ministers would certainly have sacrificed in the pursuit of a favourite, but unattainable object. But none (at least none that I have heard of) saw this calamity with the terrors with which it has since been heightened; for none imagined that, after another so awful lesson, there could be any talk of continuing our inauspicious war on America."

Life, vol. i. p. 182.-ED.

himself; the sight of him, for he called on me the next morning, was more than ordinarily welcome, though your letter of the 10th, which I received the night before, had dispelled many of my fears. I will now unfold them to you. A pacquet-boat from Ostend was lost last week, and your nephew was named for one of the passengers. As Mrs. Noel had expected him for a fortnight, I own my apprehensions were strengthened; but I will say no more on a dissipated panic. However, this incident and his half-wreck at Lerici will, I hope, prevent him for the future from staying with you so late in the year; and I see by your letter that you agree with me, of which I should be sure though you had not said so.

I mentioned on Tuesday the captivity of Lord Cornwallis and his army, the Columbus who was to bestow America on us again. A second army taken in a drag-net is an uncommon event,* and happened but once to the Romans, who sought adventures everywhere. We have not lowered our tone on this new disgrace, though I think we shall talk no more of in

* Dr. Franklin, in a letter written on the 26th of November to Mr. Adams, makes the same reflection: "It is a rare circumstance," he says, " and scarce to be met with in history, that in one war two armies should be taken prisoners completely, not a man in either escaping. It is another singular circumstance, that an expedition so complex, formed of armies of different nations and of land and sea forces, should with such perfect concord be assembled from different places by land and water, form their junction punctually, without the least retard by cross accidents of wind or weather, or interruption from the enemy; and that the army which was their object should in the mean time have the goodness to quit a situation from whence it might have escaped, and place itself in another whence any escape was impossible."—ED.